In discussion of counterfactual history, a point of divergence (POD), also referred to as a departure point or divergence point (DP), is a historical event with two possible postulated outcomes. Typically these represent the actual course of historical events (Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo) and another, such as Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo.

One multiverse theory posits that PODs are occurring all the time, with an infinite variety of possible outcomes that each creates a universe, this having been used as a premise to the 1990s U.S.television seriesSliders. Speculative fiction is full of universes based loosely on the concept of multiple universes, including many fantasy milieus. An example from fantasy is the Discworld series which jumps between several distinct settings.

A video game that shows signs of divergence points is the Japanese visual novel game, Steins;Gate, in which the main character travels between world lines, but ultimately finds out that his actions lead to a Dystopian world and had to travel back in time to fix what had happened.

In the 2003 anime series of Fullmetal Alchemist, there exists a gateway that can be conjured by alchemists that acts as a source of all knowledge and energy; towards the end of the series, it is revealed that this gateway connects the world of the anime with the real world, set during the first decades of the 20th century. It is revealed that the two worlds shared a common history until their histories diverged, apparently due to the success of alchemy in one world and that of modern physics in the other.